Legend
< Spiritualism and Religion (continued from page 8-302) >
In vain now is it said so over and over again of the material counterpart, that empty form, the Lord’s Supper, the eucharist of the Church. In vain the priests and clergy multiply its celebration; in vain, for “He cometh not.” The divine law necessary for His appearance is unknown or broken, and He cannot come.
But the time is coming when these material counterparts of the spiritual realities will disappear, and soon? in London will be laid the foundation stone for the first temple of the living God, whom we have had since the days of old. We have long tried to worship, and built places for the worship of a sleeping God, We say, or act at least, as if He were sleeping, and our worship is the worship that one would pay to a sleeping God, as long as we maintain that He never manifests Himself in any way whatsoever nowadays; and though our clergy will—so little do they understand what they are talking about—solemnly maintain that the Ineffable Being, the Sacred One whose name we cannot even utter, spoke personally to Gideon, and arranged the whole plan of the dry or bedewed fleece, and though He in those days gave personal communications about comparatively trivial matters in one small corner of the earth, He has now refused for centuries to the whole world and the greatest minds in it, who interrogate on the most important topics of the universe, the very slightest acknowledgment of His presence at all. No! Spiritualists do not worship a sleeping God; they do not require to be told, with the fine irony of the followers of Elijah, that their God is only a human being like themselves. On the contrary, this is what we tell the world. We say to the priests of Baal, “You have raised up a God according to the sum of your knowledge; and because you know no more, you say it is irreligious to inquire more: we, the worshippers of a real living God, know that there is no end to knowledge, and that the Author and Being of us all is as ever the essence, and origin, and sustainer of the universe.”
Once upon a time three philosophers were talking under a portico. They were speaking of the gods. One ignorant pretender declared that he knew of no life after death, therefore there was none. “My friend,” said one of the others to him, looking down from aloft from his spiritual plane—“My friend, go and die three or four times, then come to me, and after that you may speak to me under this portico.”
Yes. Experience can teach us some truth, if not all truth; we have had, at all events, the experience what it is to live under the dominion of a sleeping God; and the truth it teaches us is, that as things are so very wrong, perhaps the error may be in us, and not in God at all. We know that He has given us this world as a garden to live in, flourish in, and develop our faculties in, whereas we are vegetating only. We believe in the great alchemist nature, but not in the real mission of his crucible death; at least, we talk vaguely enough about it, and the uses of this crucible. We say that it sends us somehow to the kingdom of this sleeping God, in whose deaf ear we shall at once begin to sing psalms, of whose authorship no one knows. But it is wearisome to go over the tedious list of our mis-or non-beliefs, so many of us are beginning to know them so well, and so many also know therefore so much better, and so many know, too, that they must gird up their loins to receive and respond to the wave of spiritual food which comes now, and will come with still greater strength amongst us all. Girt with this strength and power we shall be ready to welcome the religion of the future. A while ago I said and wrote that I did not suppose or presuppose that Spiritualism could mean a new religion. I don’t say so now either. “A new religion.” No religion can be in its essence “new;” it must always be a reformation—that is, a continual righting of the deviations of a compass, which ought always to point to an eternal truth; but I do say that all existing religions must be reformed by Spiritualism, or that they will cease to exist at all. Spiritualism is the only thing on this earth that contains within itself the true kernel of knowledge, and the clue to the future. It is a development of old sciences, and one required for our needs; within its precincts will be contained all that there is of the future for our race, as far as the coming cycle is concerned-—the philosophy, the music, the art, the literature of the future. There is no limit to the development of the spirit, as our sacred writers tell us. By these I do not mean only those whose writings are bound up in the book called the Bible, but all through whose writings God’s Spirit has spoken, from Plato and Swedenborg to Boehrne or Harris, or any other seer, whose sixth sense God has opened. These writings will then be understood, and not estimated, as they are, by the unenlightened—that is, by most minds —as the ravings of hallucinationists or madmen; and they will be looked upon as Bibles; and who knows but that Bibles may come and Bibles may go ad infinitum, for as knowledge increases we shall want fresh food.
We want it, at all events, now, and we look for real spiritual teachers who can tell us more than we know ourselves, and through whose mediumship the reformation of our souls can begin: with that our emotions and our enthusiasm will spring joyfully forth; we shall not question “Is life worth living?” “Do we wish we were out of it?” Such thoughts will be far from us. Life will be but a bright resting-place for our bodies while our souls are preparing for their flight to the next sphere, and we shall none of us think of wishing to be out of it while we have work to do in this world, both to the suffering souls and bodies of those amongst us still in the darkness of superstition and still sleeping, worshipping their imaginary sleeping Deity. We have also work to do for the souls of those who have passed from among us, either in sin or violence, and who are still causing sorrow and death in our midst.
This last is a great work for Spiritualists, and until it is accomplished, and until “the souls that are in prison” are released, and they no longer come to instil evil into the world; until then we cannot hope for peace on earth. All evil influences must be removed from without and from within before our task is ended in this world, or the next, or in any of the next worlds. But there will be no dulness in this life, no aimlessness, no stagnation when this work is understood, and it is now understood by many people. Death will be no longer the tragedy taught by Mr. Greg, nor life any longer the needless martyrdom, to serve no end, taught by Winwood Reade. He teaches us better, no doubt, now; but life is simply a station on the road, and we each of us, as not taught by theology, take our own path. Some of us, at our peril, take tortuous and dangerous ones, and we shall suffer; but all these roads have but one ending. It is our duty as Spiritualists to light the lamps and point the way, instead of being ashamed of our calling, and holding or shielding our belief under the shelter of this or that great name known to the material world as great in philosophy, or science, or religion. We ought to cry shame upon ourselves for so doing; and if the lamp of truth is put into our hands to show to mankind, let us boldly do so, and not mind if in our ranks are to be found only the unknown and humble in this, world. He will be the greatest pioneer who trims his light and keeps it burning best; and it should signify nothing to <... continues on page 8-304 >